Numbers 21.4-9 Psalm 107 Ephesians 2.1-10 John 3.14-21
The Rev. Dr. Warner Bailey, Preacher
March 18, 2012
To preach from the epistle to the Ephesians is a daunting challenge both for the preacher and for you, who must listen. Paul’s language is high-flying, abounding in multiple meanings, and frankly just a bit weird. So I have organized this sermon into three parts as you can see from the title: Planned before Time Began; Liberated in this Present Age; Immeasurably Loved in Ages to Come. You see the progression goes chronologically from past to present to future. But that’s not how I’m going to proceed. I will begin with the middle phrase, Liberated in this Present Age, then move to the first phrase before ending with the third.
Visiting your local gas station for a fill-up is not a happy occasion. It’s almost as if the price per gallon is jumping even as you are squeezing the nozzle grip. And short of stopping driving your car there’s not a thing you can do about it. You must pay what the meter says.
It’s become a spectator sport to blame someone like the president for high gas prices, but the press is full of economists’ comments that he has little if anything to do with this mountain of hurt. More likely to blame are the rising tensions in the Middle East, hoarding of oil by speculators, rising demand in Asia, and the taking of refineries off-line in this country. I doubt there is anyone of us here who could do anything to change this.
And that feeling of being bound in helplessness is what’s behind the middle phrase of my sermon title: Liberated in this Present Age. Visiting your local gas station is just one example of being bound in helplessness that happens all the time. Every day we come up against situations where we find our ability to decide and do and move around is sharply curtailed and squeezed by forces over which we have no control. The unstoppable progress of incurable disease. The implacable refusal of insurance companies to increase our medications. The financial melt-down that left us poorer. Our search in vain for a job.
Situations where simply trying harder will not make things better.
A student has just failed the last and crucial test
A wife worries sick over her young marriage.
A distinguished grey man of some means trembles under new fantasies of night.
A thirtyish single blond wonders whether some man will yet.
A preacher can’t believe his own old words.
A salesman, slowing down, needs another early drink for many roads.
A nursing home widow forces angry loneliness into powdered sweetness.[i]
The Apostle Paul knows quite a bit about this kind of living. However, human helplessness, for Paul, gets infused with a big dose of terror and the demonic. Something is out there, dark and sinister, which sucks you into a rut, a channel, a chute that lands you in disaster. Something gets hold of your mind and heart and you can’t help but follow, follow, follow right over the cliff.
We recoil at thinking of ourselves that way. Don’t we have free will? A 401-K? A college degree? We fancy ourselves immune. I’m not the kind of person who is led around as if I had a ring through my nose.
But evidently all of us can be hooked that way. Evidently we must be vulnerable to being captivated by powers that can take over our minds and wills and use us for their own benefit. Otherwise why would such an obscene amount of money be spent on political attack ads? Speech that appeals directly to the basest, rawest, most nativist emotions all of us carry. Imagery that stirs up prejudice and plays off our envy of superiors and our shame of inferiority. Why would those who construct such awful ads think they could get away with it? Well, it’s been proven that they can. Ad makers have good evidence that there is a red-neck, paranoid, chauvinist, fearful, blind, and unreasoning streak in each of us. Those whose political future is up for grabs depend so heavily on such ads to get them the votes because they know the power of red-meat speech to stir up our irrational passions.
If you think you are somebody who has such a strong will and better knowledge so that you don’t have to kow-tow to the powers that be, Paul says you are sadly deceived. He does not mince words. “You were dead…following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient…in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses.” Paul’s language may seem weird and offensive. But he is right-on when he talks about how easy it is to kid ourselves. We think we are acting freely when in truth we are being sucked up in mass-hysteria. How stupid we are to say we were thinking rationally when in truth we have taken leave of our senses. How terribly we have deceived ourselves when we believe we are acting prudently when in reality we are racing pell-mell down a rut, a channel, a chute toward disaster.
Now I can imagine that if Paul were preaching this text, he would be talking with his arms stretched out and bent like he was holding the world. And, sure enough, what Paul is describing is a world where we are manipulated and controlled by a destructive and evil force. But then, Paul would drop his arms and point directly at his audience. “But you,” he would say, “are alive.” And with that word “alive” Paul signals that we are different. In this world filled as it is with powers beyond our control whose aim is our destruction, we are different. We may not escape being crushed, indeed we will probably be crushed, but that does not cancel out the fact that we are different. Alive.
We are different because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. How can we forget that Jesus was nailed to a cross. He was helpless in the hands of the combined powers of darkness. Fixed by nails through hand and foot to a piece of wood, he made himself bound in helplessness just like world. He was dominated by cruel powers, unable to do anything to save himself. When he was resurrected after three days in the grave, he freed himself from the combined powers of darkness. He has stripped himself of every kind of downward drag; he has stripped himself of every kind of implacable inevitability. No longer is he fixed by cruel necessity. In a word, he is Alive.
We are different because Jesus has taken us into himself, and we are alive in Jesus. Here is what you can take away from this sermon. In Jesus you are stripped of the power of the downward drag to define who you are. In Jesus you are freed from the power of implacable inevitability to dictate your future. In Jesus your actions are no longer fixed by cruel necessity.
We are alive, even though we are still subject to malevolent and malignant powers. We may be crushed by some interlocking system of greed, fraud, official lying, and militarism. Nevertheless, we are alive, because in Christ the powers of darkness have lost their ability to tell us who we are and what to do. We are different, because we can live and do differently.
Now as I move on to the two other phrases in my sermon title, here is where Paul’s thinking just goes off the map.
We were planned long before time began to do good works. You see, the powers which manipulate us to our disaster do not have the first word to say about us. God has the first word and it is that God has planned for us before time began to live a life of good works. How great it is for a child to hear from mother and dad, “We wanted you. We planned for you.” Well, whether that is true about you or not, God planned for you to live in Christ long before time began. Long before this world got into the clutches of malignant and malevolent powers, you were planned to be a liberated person in Christ. Long before “we once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so were by nature children of wrath…[way before any of that] We are…created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” In Christ the powers of darkness cannot get at you to make you do harm to yourself. In Christ you can do good works in a world that is hostile and self-serving. God planned it.
Christ himself is the good work prepared beforehand, that we should walk in him. We study the life of Christ and we ponder his self-less living that we may gain an insight into how we are to live in trust, obedience, repentance, and praise. It takes trial and error to find out what is good, pleasing and perfect. As we study Christ’s life and experiment with what we learn, God makes clear to us the good work we are to do.[ii]
Now here’s the final stupendous thing that can be said about you. You can count on being immeasurably loved in ages to come. What a piece of work God has made of us! “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us…made us alive together with Christ… that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Imagine that! That whenever in the ages to come we are challenged or upset or caused to be wretched, God will show us healing in ways that we could never have anticipated. That as the ages to come roll over us, filled with the weight of failure and the pride of accomplishment, the immeasurable riches of God’s grace will cushion harmful effects and intensify the joy of good times. That as we wonder in ages to come whether anybody out there has a kind word to say to us, we will take comfort in knowing that God has put us where God is able to show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Remember that refrain from Robert Munch’s children’s book Love You Forever?
I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.
What child does not yearn to hear that their parents will love them forever and ever? Regardless of whether your parents told you that or not, because you are in Christ, you are immeasurably loved by God in ages to come.
Planned long before time began; liberated in this present age; immeasurably loved in ages to come. I’d be happy with just one of these realities. But God gives us three! Talk about a circle of blessing defined by these three fixed points. Talk about being fixed within such an awesome triangulation. Talk about a triple benediction, a trifecta of abundance, a thrilling hat-trick of hope. In the turmoil of the passing of the old and the birthing of the new, our lives are positioned between the solid rock of being planned for long before time began and the glorious destiny of being immeasurably loved in ages to come. Therefore, sit up and take notice of the place where God has put you. Stand up and walk tall. Laugh and sing as those for whom the weight of the world has suddenly been lifted off. All is light and joy and energy.